Cooking stoves with electric elements are well known, and used in a variety of configurations and models. The popularity of electric cooking stoves is well found. Electric stoves operate without an open flame, and so, are much safer and less vulnerable than any device using an open flame. Further, there is no chance of a gas leak as there is with natural gas cooking stoves. The electric heating elements are easily repaired in an operation that is much more easily managed than the relatively complex repair and replacement of the various parts of a gas stove burner.
However, many cooks prefer a natural gas cooking stove over an electric cooking stove. The reason is that natural gas permits a wide range of applied heat to be controlled virtually instantaneously. In contrast, electric cooking stoves change temperature relatively slowly. For a skilled cook, who must exert precise control when manipulating complex recipes, the slow changes of an electric cooking stove are unacceptable. Even if the delicacy of heat control is not an issue, there is considerable aggravation entailed in the time delay necessary for electric heating elements to reach the desired temperatures. Likewise, electric heating elements cool down so slowly that it is often necessary to remove the cooking vessels in order to avoid overcooking due to the residual heat from the electric heating element.
The precise, near-instantaneous heat adjustments of a gas cooking element is simply not available in conventional electrical cooking stoves. Accordingly, there is a need for an electric cooking stove heating element that admits to far faster temperature adjustment than is possible conventionally. Further, there is also a need for precise temperature adjustment for electric cooking stove. Preferably, both of these attributes would be combined in the more desirable improvements for electric cooking stoves.
The aforementioned attributes have been achieved by the inventive embodiments of the now-allowed U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/938,360. All of the subject embodiments include a hollow electric heating element, which carries a heat transfer fluid.
While achieving a number of highly desirable goals, these embodiments are limited by certain drawbacks. Firstly, a special type of heating element (as depicted in FIG. 12) is necessary to carry the heat transfer fluid. Accordingly, there is substantially greater expense in the manufacturing of the electric heating elements. Further, the fluid handling system has to be sized and figured to accommodate the small size of the hollow tubing within the electric heating elements. This adds further complications to the heat control system, making the heat transfer fluid handling system relatively complex.
Running the heat transfer fluid in long channels to accommodate each heating element leads to an inefficient use of the energy by which the heat transfer fluid is cooled or heated. In addition, certain modifications of the stove top in which the heating elements are used become very problematical when heat transfer fluid is circulated through the heating elements. For example, the use of the previous embodiments with a sealed flat cook top (now a very popular arrangement) becomes problematical.
Accordingly, the drawbacks of heating elements moderated with heat transfer fluid should be eliminated or at least mitigated for the sake of creating simpler, more efficient, and less expensive systems that still take advantage of all the original characteristics of the parent patent application. Preferably the new embodiments would embrace additional advantages, such as increased efficiency, over those found in the original embodiments.